Streetscapes — Clarence True: A Twist on the Town House

True developed the southeast corner of 80th Street and Riverside Drive, shown in 1899, left, and today.

Left to right: Office for Metropolitan History; Robert Caplin for The New York Times

January 24, 2013

Streetscapes

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY

Although known as an architect who transformed the Upper West Side with light, lacy houses in Flemish and Elizabethan styles, Clarence True was also a developer, and had a row-house vision for eight blocks of Riverside Drive, a panorama of picturesque rooflines and oak-paneled interiors.

Most were later stripped of interior detail and converted to apartments, but one, at 326 West 80th Street, survived nearly intact and is coming back to life as a single-family residence.

True first appeared as an architect in city directories in the 1880s, and by around 1890 was an Upper West Side specialist. He persuaded several developers to adopt his picturesque styles and to eliminate the hoary stoop, replacing it with a ground-floor entrance to a reception room in front, a kitchen in back, and a parlor and a dining room on the second floor.

In the late 1890s, True became a developer on his own account, and cast his eyes on the mostly empty lots of Riverside Drive from the middle 70s to the low 80s. Riverside, seen as the future gold coast of the Upper West Side, was still mostly unbuilt. Apartment construction was beginning to encroach on this sacred territory, an insult that True vowed to stop.

In early 1898, The New York World reported that True would begin work in the spring on “about 30 handsome dwellings” on Riverside Drive. A year later, The World noted that T. Lemuel James, a former postmaster general, had “joined the millionaires” in True’s riparian vision, in his case at 322 West 80th Street.

True built at least three dozen houses, among them those on Riverside between 76th and 77th and from 80th to 81st, as well as on the southeast corners of 80th and 83rd Streets.

At the 80th Street corner True used a trick that became his signature. The conventional way to fill up a corner plot with row houses is to divide it up into narrow, shoebox-like lots of identical dimensions. But True played with the footprints of the houses to give some a more comfortable, squarish shape.

That makes them difficult to read, and to the initiated those at the southeast corner of 80th Street reveal the puzzle. The corner house, 78 Riverside Drive, seems to be a single chunky round tower, flanked by houses with tall gabled fronts — three separate houses in all. But they actually form a single dwelling, almost square in plan.

A town house designed by Clarence True at 326 West 80th Street is being returned to a single-family dwelling.

Andrea Mohin / The New York Times

And next door on 80th Street are what appear to be a pair of houses, both brick, with their two separate doorways at extreme right and left. But this, too, is a clever decoy: It’s a single, double-wide house, numbered 326 West 80th, with a service entrance on the left and the main entrance on the right.

Because several of the houses in the group are wider in the front than the typical row house, they are not built as deeply as their neighbors, and share their rear yards with others.

The millionaires attracted to such unconventional designs were people like William Seaich, who operated the Opera Livery Stables, and took over the corner house, No. 78 Riverside Drive, with his family of five and four servants.

One early reported sale — that of 74 Riverside Drive, another in the 80th Street group — was for $62,000. A 1903 auction notice for the contents of the “magnificently furnished mansion” at 75 Riverside Drive included Sèvres vases, “immense” Aubusson tapestries, tiger and polar bear rugs, and a rock-crystal table service.

True’s houses at 80th Street and Riverside were soon converted to apartments and schools. By June 1923 the Seaich house was the Clark School, providing college-prep courses to students like Louis Kemper, who was bound for Yale. Unfortunately, a chemistry experiment went awry, and an explosion sent shrapnel into his body, severing an artery. He bled to death.

And in 1926, The New York Sun reported that Gladys Cooper, an actress living in an apartment at 74 Riverside Drive, had walked into a police station and opened her fur coat to reveal nothing but her underwear. She said she wanted to prove to the police that she had been bruised in an accident at the Princetonian Club. Of no connection to the college, the Princetonian was a gambling operation that had been raided by the police more than once.

Twenty years later Thornton W. Allen was a resident of No. 74; he was a composer of college fight songs, including the “Washington & Lee Swing,” “Oregon Battle Song” and “March of the Fighting ’Gators.”

The double house at 326 West 80th was in recent years a two-family dwelling, and now a security analyst, who asked that his name not be used to protect his family’s privacy, is recombining it.

A neighbor who also did not wish to be identified for the same reason said No. 326 had been almost entirely intact, and he had been upset to see paneling, doors and other woodwork removed. “It was heartbreaking,” he said.

On a recent night, an upper floor was illuminated, and you could see the bare walls and ceiling joists. But Steven Harris, the architect on the job, said that the paneling had not been discarded, just sent out for refinishing, and to make rewiring and air-conditioning easier. He said he was working from True’s original drawings and expected the renovation to be seamless, adding, “Once it’s finished, if you didn’t have the plans, you might not be able to tell that it’s been changed.”